LA's Summer Olympics Are Just Five Years Away. Here's Where Preparations Stand

July 14th marked five years out from the opening ceremony for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in L.A. Planning is begin to ramp up, as the city anticipates an influx of thousands of spectators and athletes from around the world.

LAist's public affairs show AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM, talked with local officials and experts familiar with the preparations about what's in the works, what's expected to be done when, and how we'll gracefully press pause on many of these massive projects for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Transportation

Los Angeles CA March 27

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Los Angeles is known for many things, but zippy and convenient public transportation isn't one of them. The 2028 Olympics Games may help change that. The Olympics often offer host cities the opportunity to work on and prioritize long-standing projects that may not otherwise have the necessary public support or financing.

Seleta Reynolds, chief officer of Strategic Innovation at L.A. Metro, is overseeing the agency's Olympic efforts and she hopes these large projects will get a much-needed surge in support as the games approach. One of those projects is the Purple Line out to UCLA, where most—if not all—the athletes will be housed. The airport connector is another one.

"Those are going to be game changers," Reynolds tells us.

The region will be transformed, transportation experts like Reynolds say. "With or without the games, the voters endorsed [these projects] as part of measure M," Reynolds said about some of the current construction already taking place in the city. L.A. is also hosting the 2026 World Cup, and Reynolds said the city will have to "gracefully keep our construction projects moving" while also making sure spectators have a great experience at that event.

The Olympics is a car-free event, Reynolds notes. City transportation officials have their work cut out for them.

Economics

Historically, most Olympic host cities don't turn a profit, and instead end up in debt with a glut of empty venues that have little purpose beyond hosting Olympic events. After the 1984 Summer Games, however, Los Angeles had a surplus of $230 million. This was unprecedented and may have been one of the deciding factors that helped the city win its bid for the 2028 games.

"The economic opportunity is immense," said Dean Baim, an economics professor at Pepperdine University. Baim, who has studied the impact of sporting venues and written about the financial impact of Olympics on host cities, warns of the common pitfall — a misstep in construction leading to large and unexpected expenditures. Fortunately for L.A., most of the sporting venues already exist and just need to be updated.

In the case of L.A., Baim says, the economic prospects might outweigh the downsides. The Olympics could pump money into the local economy and be a huge win for the hard-hit mom-and-pop stores that squandered during the pandemic. The job opportunities will be plentiful as well, he says.

Housing

Homelessness is far and away the biggest issue of concern for Angelenos, and is one that will only become more urgent the closer we creep to the games. So, how will the city house tens of thousands of people in five years? It's a question local officials are still working on answering.

"Remember that we all have to be a part of the solution. It's all hands on deck," Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said. Wraparound services are necessary to prevent people from returning to homelessness, she says. State and federal funding are expected to help with job training. Solis said it's also important to expunge people's records, making it easier for them to find and keep work.

As for event housing, athletes will be at UCLA, which has spent a lot of money upgrading the dorms. Housing athletics has historically been one of the biggest price tags of the Olympic Games. Los Angeles is fortunate to have housing available. Media will be housed at USC, along with other officials.

Venues

The 1984 Summer Olympics was the most viewed event in television history at the time, with more than 180 million Americans tuning in to watch. At the time, L.A.'s Memorial Coliseum was the most fit location for the opening and closing ceremonies. It was the focal point for athletic events as well.

Runners in the Men's 3,000 meter steeplechase final compete on August 6, 1984 during the Track and Field competition of the 1984 Olympic Games at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Visible at left wearing red is Brian Diemer of the USA, the eventual bronze medalist; Julius Kariuki of Kenya is at center right, wearing red shorts and red shoes; Joseph Mahmoud of France is at center rear midair above torch.

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This next Olympics has more options for venues. SoFi Stadium will take on the bookend ceremonies, but not entirely. The Inglewood-based arena will kickoff the opening ceremony and the torch will make its way to the Coliseum in a nod to the 1984 Games.

Other local venues will include the Kia Forum, where we'll see several gymnastics disciplines like trampoline and artistic gymnastics, the Honda Center in Anaheim, which will host volleyball, and the Rose Bowl, which will be the home of the final rounds of the soccer tournament (BMO Stadium, where LAFC plays, will host the preliminaries).

Arts and culture

In 1984, L.A. was eager to transform its image, and its infrastructure, from laid-back surfer town with heavy congestion to world-class economic and cultural epicenter with state-of-the-art facilities and venues. Fortunately for the city and its residents, it did just that.

The legacy of the '84 Summer Games continues to this day in many ways, maybe most visibly in the LA84 Foundation, which administers the surplus money generated by the 1984 games and distributes it in the form of grants to non-profit youth sports organizations. Its success resonated for years and decades beyond its summer hosting responsibilities. Now, cultural ambassadors, economists and city planners are eager to build on that success.

"We want to pick up what we learned from the 1984 Olympics, because there were so many cultural activities," said Solis, who authored a motion this past May to uplift arts, culture, and recreation during the '28 summer Olympic Games.

While L.A. City is the official host of the games, Solis says she understands that the county also has a great opportunity to buttress neighborhoods and communities, and her hope is that L.A. Metro and L.A. County can integrate their efforts. "This work really needs to happen now, even five years out from the Olympics."

A mural reveals the new LA28 logo, with the "A" designed by Orlando Pride player Alex Morgan, at the Delano Recreation Center on September 01, 2020 in Van Nuys.

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Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, agrees on the need to build on the successful history of the 1984 games. From a policy perspective, arts and culture are core to our economy, she reminds us. The games, she said, are "an opportunity to increase and celebrate our local cultural diversity that speaks to the world."

The 1984 Olympics pulled off an arts festival that brought communities together throughout the county. Solis and Sakoda are working to make the '28 games reflect the rich and diverse ecosystem of arts in L.A., that visitors from around the world might not otherwise see and experience. They remind us too, that no single arts entity can pull this off alone, and that it will take a phenomenal amount of planning and collaboration, which is in its nascent stages.

The International Olympic Committee does periodic check-ins with every host city, typically done in person to get a real-time sense of the progress. L.A.'s next meeting has been planned on Zoom, which local officials say suggests things are going well.

While five years might seem far away, in Olympic years it's right around the corner.

Listen to the conversation